Duplicate Content - Part 1 of a Bazillion

November 30th, 2006 | by Mitchell Allen |

The following post originally appeared on my WritingUp.com blog. It’s a fluff piece, but my point in posting it is to show you how you can reuse your content when you’re too busy to crank out something new.
Contrary to popular misconception, you will not be penalized for duplicate articles. If you worship at the altar of Google, you should know that, yea tho’ it crawls through the valley of pages, you should fear no evil, for it is smart enough to distinguish between duplicate content and cloned websites.
Anyhoo, enjoy the article.

Have You Paved Your Way Yet?
I participated in a recent forum discussion on EntrepreneurDad.com about how we advertise our websites.
One member described our websites as parking lots, stating that they are where we want people to go. He added that blogs and networking communities are the street signs telling folks how to get there.
I liked that so much, I decided to share it with my favorite blog / networking community. I brought my Legos to the table and added some structures:

All Parking Lots, Big and Small

  • Niche sites are parking lots to the truck stops on the internet superhighway. Folks pull in for specific needs: food, gas, bathroom and sleep.
  • Information sites are parking lots for our digital neighborhood library, or small bookstore.
  • eCommerce sites are parking lots at the mall. Whether it’s a strip mall or a 310-acre shopping mecca (Central Park, VA) is really just a matter of scale.
  • Portal sites are parking lots at the airport. Where do you want to go today?
  • Personal, vanity sites are our digital driveways.
  • MySpace, Bloggerspot and other free web pages are really on-street, metered parking spaces, and the visitors rarely stay longer than 15 minutes.

Gated Communities

Then there is WritingUp. For many of us, this is more than a signpost. It is a winding road that leads to parking spaces for the Zoo, the University, a Museum and the Happy Clam. There’s even a skateboard park!
There are many more. To check them out, pass through the guard at the gate, who will happily issue a visitor’s pass or set up a permanent reserved space just for you. The only thing this gated community requests is that you “Put Litter in its Place.”

Where are some of your favorite parking lots?

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